Moments in a weekend

Saturday early afternoon

We sit in the bug-free zone of Kristen’s screened in porch. And by screened in porch, I mean a concrete overhang decorated with duct tape, nails, bungee cords, and cut up mosquito nets. She is mixing a concoction of delights: chocolate bars with an incredible melting point of at least 120 degrees, peanut butter that is little more than ground nuts in a plastic bag, honey made of dates but called whole fruit spread, and crushed graham-cracker-like cookies. I am sitting on the matela next to her, leafing through a special environmental edition of Vanity Fair from May 2006. Nearby, a radio plays a scratchy tape of NPR’s This American Life. Date unknown but the stories are timeless and hilarious.

“Here, try this one,” she says and offers me a bite of chocolate peanut butter cookie stuff.

I taste, nod, approve. “That’s pretty good.”

She looks at me, probing me for a more detailed evaluation. I admit, “It could use more cookie.”

Kristen keeps stirring, I keep flipping, the radio plays on.

A few minutes pass. “Ok, try this.”

I giggle and confess again, “Yep, more cookie.”

Stir, flip, listen.

Eventually, she hands me a star-shaped molded cookie thing. I pick it up carefully and nibble one of the slender star rays. “Yeah,” I say in between decadent bites.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. That’s the best yet. Holy crap, that’s good.”

Mauritanian butterfinger: delicious, comforting, worth its weight in ouguiyes. Or calories, as it were.

She stirs, I skim, we laugh.


Saturday afternoon

Almost five. I quicken my pace hoping to beat the clock. Nouha knows me well enough to know I’ll be a few minutes late for tea, but I make a labored effort through the sand anyway. Footsteps following me, no, chasing me, running after me. Fighting panic, I hold my pace and calmly turn to find a winded teenage boy next to me.

“Tissu, j’étais tissu,” he pants.

Cloth? He was cloth?

I tell him in French I don’t understand. Now walking beside me, he repeats himself, this time it sounds like “acheté tissue” – bought cloth, still gibberish to me. I tell him in Hassaniye I don’t understand.

“Howli?” he says, his voice agitated, increasing in volume. I understand this Arabic word – a headscarf men wear – but I can’t guess the context.

What do you want, I ask in French and then in Hassaniye. While he seems bent on confusing me, I am doubly intent on being understood.

“Tu comprends rien,” he spits and gestures rudely, too close to my face for comfort.

True, I think, I don’t understand anything. I don’t understand why you ran after me to speak nonsense in two languages. I don’t understand why you think it is ok for a man to speak to a single woman on the street of an Islamic country. I don’t understand why your subpar language skills require rude gestures and raised voices. I don’t understand.

I shake my head, continue walking, and stare straight ahead, the universal symbol for “thanks I’ll be on my way now, it was nice not communicating with you.” Oblivious to my attempted departure, he follows me and hurls a venomous mix of bilingual curses. I spin on him and demand, “why would you speak to a woman this way?” I explain that I am a woman and it’s rude to speak to me so crudely.

He counters, “you are a Frenchwoman.”

I am not French, I explain, ironically in French. I am American and who cares? Aane mra. Je suis une femme. I am a woman. You have to respect me because I am a woman.

“You aren’t muslim. Are you? Are you? If you are” he now switches to Hassaniye, screaming at me in the street, “then say Allah is great. SAY IT. SAY IT! ALLAH IS GREAT!”

I am dumbfounded, silent, disappointed. He continues his conversion efforts, and I continue walking. Eventually, he gestures toward me, peppers me with a few incomprehensible insults, and storms off. I survey the marketplace before I turn the corner to Nouha’s house. Ten, fifteen, maybe twenty faces fixed on me, devoid of pity, of empathy, of shame. Just detached interest, as if “harassing the nasraniye” was a game they bothered to catch on tv before dinner. Or a commercial interrupting their favorite show. Hardly worth watching intently, not bothersome enough to change the channel. After all, I’m not Muslim, am I?


Saturday afternoon, later

I arrive at Nouha’s for tea, shaken from earlier harassment en route. She runs through the Hassaniye greetings: how are you, is there goodness, how is work, what is new, is there health, how are you? I offer culturally appropriate responses: I’m fine, there is nothing but goodness, thank God, nothing new, I’m good.

She asks again, but more intently, “how are you?” The angle of her head and the depth of her gaze indicate that this question is not merely a cordial salutation.

I spill.

She listens, not with the half-interested gaze and incomprehension that I expect. Instead, she nods eagerly in agreement, validates my frustrations with stories of her own, and offers the sentiment that “men are…” worth a roll of her eyes. We laugh in solidarity, not as an American and a Mauritanian, but as two women who have been subjected to harassment. Who have been disappointed by inappropriate pick-up lines, indecent propositions, threats to our safety, and challenges to our modesty.

She explains how she received a late-night call just last week, a male friend inviting her to tea. “Tea.” She politely declined: it is late, you are married. He pressed; her tone remained demure but her resolve firm. He hung up on her. Impressively, he had the gall to call the next day. When he asked where she was, she lied. When he asked when she’d be in town next, she said next month. But then she was moving. When he asked her if she was ever going to come back, ever going to see him again, she shrugged a disinterested no. I interrupt her story with incredulous giggles, “And that worked?”

“Hag.” Of course it worked.

I think on this and attempt a summary of her lesson. “So that is what you have to do? Lie?”

“No,” she says, “you have to protect yourself.”

Hag. Of course I do.


Sunday early morning

I walk up the stairs to the bathroom. Over the wall, even without my glasses, I spot a small Mauritanian girl. Her face blossoms in recognition; I cannot see it but I hear it in the shrill rise of her voice, “nasraniye!!!!!” she screams as she sprints toward my compound. Her small feet pound into the dirt road as I duck behind the wall. “Donne-moi cadeau!!!!! Nasraniye-ha!!!!” She jumps up and down at the base of the wall, demanding my attention, my gifts. I just wanted to use the bathroom.


Sunday morning

What am I doing here?

I’m in Africa, in a Muslim country, in a conservative city, in a Catholic church.

Sunlight refracts through stained glass in slender frames that run from floor to ceiling. Father Mark leads the meager congregation – six people including me – in a chant that echoes off the domed ceiling and reverberates into the courtyard. I rake the depths of my memory to remember the call and response in French, “et avec votre esprit.”

Over four years ago, I said these same words in Paris, at Notre Dame and at Saint Severin. I felt no less out of place amidst the throngs of faithful Parisians and disrespectful tourists than I do now sitting with two Mauritanian men, two French nuns, one Spanish nun and Père Mark. But I feel decidedly less harassed in here than out there. Out there, in the street, in the open, exposed in Atar. Less targeted as a source of money, cadeaux, Bic pens, handshakes, tea dates, English lessons, and entertainment.

I am not Catholic, or institutionally religious for that matter, but Father Mark’s voice is gentle, his sermon welcoming. His bare feet peek out from his robe and grip the dusty tiles. He helps me find the correct page in the French hymn book. He offers to deliver the sermon in English, “non, merci, je comprends bien.” He asks me to come back next week.

Before my arrival in Mauritania, I was so dedicated to cultural integration that I refused any contacts associated with missionaries or Christian churches. This was less a commentary on global evangelism and more a realistic approach to living in an entirely Muslim country. How would I integrate with the locals if I embraced something so “other?”

In retrospect, the question seems silly. Embrace something so “other?” I am other. In a veil, speaking Hassaniye, eating with my hands, drinking tea, averting my eyes in the street, haggling for a kilo of onions, I will always be other.

Sunday afternoon

It peaceful, lunchtime so the streets are mostly empty. As I open the metal gate to the Girls Mentoring Center, a car approaches, slows to a crawl and eventually stops. Its driver leans out the window and peers at me through a howli that wraps his entire face. I enter the gate, and close it behind me. The driver stares. I lower my eyes and lock the gate. The driver stares. I realize the gate can be opened all too easily from the outside and I wonder why I even bother to lock it. The driver stares. I walk deliberately to the office and wonder why its front door only locks from the outside. The driver stares. I hope Kristen arrives soon so I am not alone for very long.

The driver stares.


Sunday evening

Hawa’s restaurant serves dinner just after sunset. Usually, the volunteers meet here to avoid cooking and usually, the female volunteers take an escort home. As in the male Peace Corps volunteer kind to avoid the male Mauritanian tour guide kind. Inevitably, one or the other will follow us home in the dark and we prefer goofy PCV antics to other approaches.

One of the male volunteers mentions that he hasn’t walked me home recently. “I should really remember to do that.”

I politely decline his perpetual service; I feel guilty taking him fifteen minutes out of his way every night and anyway, “I will have to learn to fend for myself eventually, right?”

He is doubtful and explains why. Apparently, walking past the gas station outside the Girls Mentoring Center office Friday, I won the audience of the attendants. I was oblivious to their catcalls, but the aforementioned volunteer heard and saw their chivalrous wooing attempts. “They were mimicking you, saying something about the way you were walking.”

“Wait,” I interrupted, “I was wearing a melifa Friday. I was covered head to toe in a veil. There was nothing to see.”

He shrugged, adding, “It was pretty crude.” I expected as much. What I didn’t expect was his next comment. I wanted him to say, I yelled at them, I defended your honor, I gave them a dirty look, I wanted to punch them, something gallant.

“They did a pretty good imitation of you,” he said and laughed.

Clearance sales in Mauritania

I’ve discerned two possible paths for me in Atar. Either, I become a cold-hearted crone who trusts no one and assumes the worst. Or, I give people the benefit of the doubt and end up assaulted, mentally for sure, physically for maybe.

Already, I’m well on my way down the former path, having unsuccessfully tried the latter. The whole “come have tea with ‘my family’” or “I was good friends with the last year PCV, what’s-his-name” bit got old quickly, as did my strategy to ignore my better judgment and hope against logic that these invitations were well-intentioned. All I got by entertaining their lies and mine was a grave dug deeper by the day and an expanding list of numbers I wish Mauritel [Mauritanian phone carrier] would block.

Cultivating naiveté is apparently a group effort since the other husband-less female PCV is having similar issues. She entertained a string of meaningless ca vas with [insert her current stalker’s name] at lunch which quickly escalated to “bonsoir, bon appétit” at dinner. And four phone calls. And three text messages. And a picture message. And an invite to his butig. All this in the span of one day. And she has the luxury of being “married” (i.e. her fiancé in Brazil doesn’t mind posing as Mr. for her protection’s sake). Unfortunately, cordiality at lunch negates wedding vows, leaving her, me, anyone open to “special friend” propositions and private tutorials on the “secret night life of Mauritanians.” Be still my trembling heart, before these romantic gestures. Opportunistic cretins.

Even [insert established PC friend], who I thought generous, kind, aloof, even simple, is driven by his libido, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Apparently, I am in his heart night and day. Oh, except when he is trying to woo the other female volunteer in Atar. Right. The only thing restraining the blunt end of my rage is [insert established PC friend]’s singular status as peanut butter provider. If I find tigadiga (Pulaar for peanut butter) elsewhere in Atar, God help me, my wrath will be swift and unapologetic.

It’s not that I’m bent out of shape having to share his undying love; in fact, I’d love to distribute the weight of his passionate SMS confessions. No, it is the sad realization that what was once endearing, if a little obsessive is revealed to be the pathetic attempts of a Mauritanian player. J’ai ton nostalgie [sic]? Je veut etre a cote de toi toujours [sic]? Substandard pick-up lines in substandard French. A wise Chinguetti PCV said it best: “wish I had a department store wall to throw that against. No clearance sale in hell would make me buy that shit.”

Between disappointments with [insert established PC friend] and failed tea with [previously inserted tour guides], random harassment at school and in the street, my mind is closing and my eyes are opening; I’m ready for bandits and alert for scheming. And don’t you know, if you look for something intently enough, you’ll find it. That’s called self-fulfilling prophesies, folks. Or conspiracy theory paranoia. Or the first step on a long road to embittered skepticism. Welcome aboard.

Honestly, I don’t mind my heart turning malignant and black for now; my gangrene is my protection. But I do wonder: will this rot follow me across the Atlantic? Will my deliberate embrace of bitter now prevent the eventual purge in 2008? Will “normal” American gender relations be sufficient to thaw my anger? Or will every potential suitor be a [insert established PC friend] in disguise? Is this sour isolation par for the course for two years and beyond? …

Practice makes ...perfect only works in theory

I meant to finish my last entry. Procrastination rears it’s ugly head… and I, paralyzed with it, couldn’t bring myself to look at these pages, to remember the entry – ironically unfinished – about my hopes and plans also pathetically unfinished. Sigh.

So what have I accomplished since my self-chastisement on the sixteenth? Should I list a dozen or so inconsequential victories that – by little to no effort on my part – miraculously took place this week? Should I check them off as if they had been planned beforehand? Even though I only “scheduled” them in my calendar after they had already happened? Even though each check mark is indicative of my tight grasp on a manufactured sense of accomplishment? Yes. Check.

[after ten minutes of reviewing calendar]

Ok. I’m melodramatic. I meant to expand the rebuke of last Monday and further pummel myself into a hole. I realize however, I had an exceedingly full week, even though all did not go as planned. Board rollercoaster of Peace Corps emotion. Disembark. Promptly vomit. Check.

Within the last week, I…
- helped prepared an integrated lesson;
- took two language exams at the Alliance Française (botched the test à l’orale, rocked the written, typical of a French lit major…);
- met with the Director at Ecole 8 (received and botched an invitation to dinner, future invites with his family possible in future);
- met Sophie (adorable co-directrice at the Alliance Française) for dinner (future language exchange definite in the future);
- conducted a spectacular PACA session at Ecole 3;
- updated APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director, essentially my EE boss);
- discussed with Keith plans to pioneer a Girls Mentoring Center for the primary school girls in Atar;
- broke fast with Nouha’s family and shared giggles and gossip with her under the clearest night since Ramadan started;
- got some face time and merited special introductions at church;
- took a chance with a random Atar resident and found a semi-respectable if not well-connected family;
- shared dinner, tea, a cooking lesson, lunch zrig, and another tea with said family;
- attended traditional fight staged for the ciid (holiday) of Ramadan;
- celebrated at [insert established PC friend]’s (wore my moor melifa, apparently a Pulaar fashion faux pas, but I redeemed myself by sporting some jewelry gifted to me by the host, I suppose it’s even);
- received and declined an invitation to “biggest soirée de l’année” (this may have been wise, given the presence of alcohol at said fête); and finally
- shared tea with two of my new.. friends (?) [insert two tour guide names].

Check, check and check. Some planned, some not, most good, some… questionable. But check.

So why such a stern appraisal for this week? Why, when I began this entry, did I have such a self-loathing, a taste in my mouth I could not brush out? First, I was afraid to write. Afraid to see my black thoughts spilled out in black ink, undeniable once written. I have been overwhelmingly negative recently, not my usual self. It makes sense that I’d not want to look in my journal’s mirror: doubt and pessimism is ugly. Second, by owning up to this week’s accomplishments, I’d have to face what I thought would be a painful lack thereof.

Turns out, the only thing to face are expectations. My Peace Corps service is a ship of guilt and impossible expectation; I am the crew and my coordinator the absentee captain. I seek his approval so desperately, even after it’s already emphatically given. Each time I talk to him, I set the bar of achievement sadistically higher. When he tells me that I’m the perfect volunteer, I’m convinced he is compelling me toward my potential rather than complimenting me on my present. Anyone who knows me can rightly imagine a distraught volunteer unable to take a compliment, unable to let extremely well enough alone. Perfection is my assignment, during stage, here at site, yesterday, today, tomorrow. It’s a looming check, never accomplished…

Why leave tomorrow what you can criticize today?

I think I thought I could escape. My boredom, my idleness, my sickness, my procrastination. If I didn’t write about my days spent at the GMC typing, at home reading, at Tyler’s house socializing, at the bureau killing time, I might not have to own up to it later. Funny, the residue of guilt. It does not fade with time, it does not respond to deliberate attempts of suppression.

Honestly, I was ill. Whether or not cold viruses exist in the Sahara or not, my nose, head, throat and lungs were full of sickness. My voice was out of commission for a day and a half, my sense of balance was actually worse than Larium-normal. For this, my inactivity was somewhat justified.

Somewhat.

Unfortunately, guiltily, this justification began to wear thin come Thursday. Now that it’s Monday, I have run out of reasons but not yet out of excuses.

I procrastinate!
I hate it!

I had a conversation with my coordinator yesterday and it was characteristically wonderful. His encouragement is unflagging, his giggles infectious, his expectations motivating… and daunting. “If you were a perfect volunteer, which you are, this is what you’d do…” Right. Perfect in that I poured through a thousand plus page Stephen King novel last week? Perfect in that I threw two dinner parties and attended another, none of which were with families or teachers or neighbors like I planned? Perfect in that I rationalize my GMC computer time by typing my plan d’action (program for the year) and planning my calendar with fancy software? What’s the use if I plan more than I do? Anticipate more than I accomplish.

I procrastinate!
I hate it!

I meant to unearth all my notes from stage, written when I was still motivated and bright-eyed with ideas and delusions of grandeur. So I could remind myself why I was here, what I had planned, when I had hoped to accomplish the myriad goals set in the heat of July and August. Meant to. As in didn’t.

first day of school

I cringed away from the spectacle at the flagpole. Seated ten feet, one language and an ocean of culture away, there was little I could say to deter Muhammed or the enthralled spectators from the impending disaster.

Instead, I watched in silent nasraniye horror as the Mauritanian primary school teacher hoisted a slight moor boy up the flagpole. His slender arms wrapped around the teetering pole; his sweaty feet gripped and slid as he inched up. The student’s elevation above sea level correlated linearly with the bowing and tilting of the pole, first a modest eighty five degrees, then eighty, seventy three, and counting… The boy reached up with tiny fingers to lace the flag string through the eye at the height of the pole, and then, victory nearly seized, dropped the string.

The green fabric with yellow crescent moon fluttered tragically to the sand and the small boy, exhausted, shimmied down after it. For now, Muhammed would allow classes to begin without the tattered Mauritanian flag slapping overhead.

Ten minutes later, a half hour into the first day of school, several more children and a teacher trickled in, pushing attendance to ten and thirty percent, respectively. During Ramadan, a month during which Muslims fast ascetically during the day and feast gluttonously when the sun sets, I expected peu d’élèves (students_ and even fewer enseignants (teachers). Less people, I supposed, to witness students plummeting from flagpoles.

I sat patiently observing the marginally scholarly scene: small children arrived haphazardly (honoring the fluidity of 7:30am according to RIM-timepieces), They chattered excitedly in a dialect of Hassaniye I had not yet learned – high pitched, school children murmur – and admired crisp melifas, shiny shoes, new bookbags, empty notebooks, unused pens and intricate hair extensions. The few teachers that deigned to come to work lounged on the floor next to the director, who had been sprawled under his desk since I had arrived. Clearly, little instruction was going to occur, so Muhammed, the only teacher on his feet, threw open a rusty door and distributed small brooms made of dried neem tree branches and covered in a summer’s worth of cobwebs and dust. The students should have cleaned the brooms before cleaning the classrooms. And by students, I mean boys, since the girls were expected to sit and demurely adjust their veils while their male counterparts sprinted across the courtyard, flung open shutters, knocked over desks and danced through clouds of sand and each other.

I decided to remedy the girls boredom; what better than with the presence of an unknown nasraniye?

Everything about me shocked and engaged them. Adults in Mauritania do not engage in conversations with children, who are too young to merit such attention. To their wide-eyed wonder, I smiled in their direction, greeted the girls in Hassaniye, and sat down between them. Despite my age, my young friends were dressed more conservatively than me. While they sported modestly colored melifas, I wore a golden yellow wrap skirt and a head scarf dyed in flashy Kaedi patterns. I was as silent as my outfit was loud, and they chattered around me, occasionally intelligible and constantly curious. Eventually they stood and organized themselves into a small walking party. I remained seated, unsure if this tour of the school grounds had an age limit. A small moor girl, young but self-assured and already stunningly beautiful, turned, adjusting her veil. “Wahaay she called to me and held out her hand. Come on.

What began as a leisurely walk around Ecole 3 eventually picked up speed. Before long, we were a colored blur of melifas, wrap skirts and shrieks of laughter, darting between school buildings and chasing each other breathless. I never had less than two girls per arm pulling me across the gravel, and three more urging me forward with shouts and giggles. We kicked up rocks and dirt with the boys. So much for being demure.

I have not seen Fatimatu since that first day of school. She has since fallen in line with the four hundred other students at Ecole 3, her piercing eyes and delicate features among dozens of veiled schoolgirls. I know as a teacher, I should not have favorites, but I look for her each time I visit the school.